Kimpton Fitzroy London Hotel, Forster

I stayed in twice in June during a summer visit through a few European cities. I'm up tonight randomly remembering breakfast. There's an all you can eat 'buffet' of sorts that has a little of everything - warm food, bagels, yogurt, kefir, fruit, warm tea, even salad. It was by far one of the best hotel breakfasts I've had. You can also order an omelette or made to order eggs. The room was charming & I believe they gave me a chocolate each night. Very elegant.

I have very mixed feelings about this Hotel. However, I could not stay here again. The positives are, it's location is fantastic, the staff are really lovely and friendly, they'll be as helpful as they can and were very accommodating, I have no faults with them at all. The hotel itself is very beautiful, it also has some very interesting history behind it. Breakfast is good, though not the best I've experienced comparing similar hotels. There's ample choice and the food tastes good. One annoying thing, is you need to request eggs to be cooked freshly. So, say you're having a "full English" from the banquet, you've likely finished eating most of your breakfast before your eggs arrive, it doesn't feel very cohesive. The cocktail bar is pleasant and the atmosphere is nice, some interesting specials on offer to drink. Room service is efficient and quick, though the chips given with meals were a bit disappointing. I cannot speak on the Spa facilities as I did not use them. Regrettably, for the following reasons it's not a 5 star experience to me, far from it. I've stayed in a few 5 star hotels now, and this was by far the worst experience I've had. The rooms are incredibly small. We had an issue with our first room and got moved to another and it was just the same. The bathrooms have very minimal counter space, so if you're sharing with someone it can get a bit difficult to find space for your products. If you're a woman and want to put on makeup, this is an incredibly awkward experience. Our bathroom was also partially broken, the rainfall shower dripped freezing cold water on you when you weren't using it. The handheld shower, when bent even slightly jetted water out the other end of it's hose, so I ended up drenching the bathroom as I wasn't expecting it when I was trying to rinse my hair. There was a broken latch on the window in our bathroom, so our bathroom was diabolical, walking on the tiles was like walking on ice. A lot of that cold then leached into our bedroom, I couldn't stop shivering all night, despite putting the heating up as much as we could. The absolute deal breaker for me however is this is one of the noisiest hotels I've ever stayed in. Through-out the night, constant loud bangs, there seems to be no sound dampening at all, inside or out. I could hear the room next to us flicking their light switches, talking, walking etc. I understand we're in the center of London and there will be some road noise, but it felt like there was no sound proofing from the street either (And having stayed in other city-center locations, I've never heard so much noise before, this loud and clear). I'm a light sleeper so this was far from ideal as I barely got any sleep at all. In the end I needed to put the TV on in order to try and drown out some of the other sounds for a more consistent volume to attempt to get any sleep, I think I managed about 2 hours on my first night. My partner however, that usually sleeps like the dead, also struggled to sleep and was constantly awoken by the sounds. The banging from inside the hotel and noise was incredibly intrusive. I'm not sure if it was from staff moving around inside the hotel, or people coming back to their rooms, but it didn't stop at any point during our stay and it was very consistent. Overall, these issues greatly impacted our stay, and made it a much more negative experience than a positive one, and I couldn't recommend to stay here to others, which is a shame.